CB Insights: Intelligence on High Growth Sectors
Jinfo Blog

By Perrin Kerravala

Abstract

Venture capital database CB Insights is highly appealing for professionals in the investment, mergers & acquisitions (M&A), high tech, biotech, and other high-growth industries, finds reviewer Perrin Kerravala. New features since our 2012 review include proprietary research with commentary and data, valuation metrics for select financing and M&A deals, and data visualisation tools including heat maps, charts and graphics.

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CB Insights is a provider of information on high-growth companies and investors, as well as intelligence on investments, fundraising, and exits. FreePint last spoke with them in March 2012, in FreePint’s Mini Review of CB Insights: Part I and Part 2. Our latest Mini Review brings readers up to speed on the latest developments.

The product is highly appealing for professionals in the investment, mergers & acquisitions (M&A), high tech, biotech, and other high-growth industries. Subscribers receive daily emails with the latest deal news on private equity/venture capital investments, other financings, M&A deals, as well as exits such as buyouts and Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). News stories are linked back to full company, investor and deal profiles on www.cbinsights.com. CB Insights has excellent coverage of the United States especially, and decent coverage of other English-language jurisdictions.

CB Insights is notable for its technologically-driven data collection methods. Like many other vendors, the company relies on public sources such as news articles, investor relations websites, and filings. What is different is CB Insights’ capabilities in parsing and extracting data automatically and accurately, greatly reducing overhead for data entry analysts and other time-consuming, low value work. The savings are passed on to customers, without any sacrifice to data quality or platform performance.

Growth over the past year has been impressive and the CB Insights database now holds over 104,000 company profiles, 140,000 deal profiles, 42,000 investors/acquirers, and 2.5 million people profiles. Coverage is still highly slanted towards North American and European activity, with a noticeable dearth on South American, African and Middle East content especially.

New Features

CB Insights has recently launched several additional new appealing features, including:

• Proprietary research, featuring CB Insights data and commentary
• The ability to rank investors, financing, and exits
• Valuation metrics for select financing and M&A deals, including multiples
• Data visualisation tools, such as heat maps, charts and graphs
• Excel plug-in and template capabilities.

These latest enhancements have added significant content and functionality and make CB Insights a serious competitor for financing intelligence, especially for professionals interested in North American and Western Europe activity.

Readers can find out details on these impressive latest enhancements in FreePint’s new Mini Review of CB Insights.

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